Work Text:
I. Heart beats harder, time escapes me
He remembers the smell of dust, of sweat and fear. Remembers the way the blankets nailed over the windows never fully filtered the sunlight out, the fabric too moth-eaten. He remembers the little pockets of light that would spill through the holes in the blankets, dancing along the floor and the walls as the sun shifted in the sky. Remembers the way the dust gleamed in those little streams of light, remembers small hands, smaller fingers, dancing through the buttery shafts, the dust swirling around in the air. He remembers blonde hair, long strands of it, getting caught between his toes when he snuck around, remembers the worn footprints in the aging floors, marking the spots that didn’t creak.
Don’t draw attention to yourself.
Don’t draw attention to your sister.
Stay quiet.
Stay hidden.
He remembers a whispered promise. “They’ll never find you.”
“I won’t let them take you.”
A scream, brutal and panicked, trembling with tears.
“Keep her safe!”
Don’t let anything happen to his sister.
He remembers the girl with the shotgun, ordering him to stand, her blonde hair glinting the color of spun straw in the sunlight. Remembers her smile, and how it made his chest ache, an uncomfortable twinge that had him pressing the palm of his hand against his collarbone. He remembers the panic he couldn’t explain when she was taken, the relief when she was on the train car they rescued. He remembers how easily that relief was eclipsed by his anger when Minho wasn’t there, when Minho was still with WCKD, remembers how for just a moment, he almost felt guilty for caring more about Minho than the blonde girl.
And for a moment, a brilliant second that shines like the dust did in those shafts of light, Newt remembers Lizzie.
II. If we could only have this life for one more day
He remembers when, for just a moment, just a moment in time, everything had seemed…perfect. Close enough to it. Thomas wasn't panicking that WCKD would find them. They were safe.
Sure, they'd lost people. A lot of people. Too many people.
But they were safe. They'd found the Right Arm, found safety, found people who could protect them and give them a chance to just be kids, the way they always should have been. The way none of them could remember being.
He remembers feeling at peace, with the crisp mountain breeze brushing his face and turning his cheeks a faint red. Thinking that finally, he didn't have to be in charge, didn't have to be the leader, the face people looked to for answers, the voice people listened to for reassurance. He and Thomas had done what Alby had asked, and they'd gotten the others to safety.
Maybe now he would have a moment to stop, a moment to think, a moment to reflect, and then a moment to let go, so he wouldn't carry the burden of Chuck and Winston and Alby and Ben and George and Gally and all the others who had fallen so that everyone else could get here, to this moment.
He remembers thinking that even if this wasn't the safe haven the adults running the encampment were talking about, he could be happy here, in the mountains, in the cold.
He remembers missing snow, though he doesn't remember when he last saw it before those days just outside of the Scorch. And he remembers, even though he doesn't want to, why the peace he felt in the mountains was ruined.
The low sound of the hovercraft, flying and then descending. The sounds of chaos—gunshots, explosions, screaming, crying. The heat of the fire, the scent of wet grass impossibly burning.
He remembers, even though he doesn't want to, Minho's body being dragged up the ramp into the hovercraft, and Teresa's face as the ramp lifted and closed, and the hovercraft flying away. Thomas's face, the boy's rage, his determination.
And if this was the destination for him, maybe, just maybe, if he got the chance to do it all again, he still would.
III. If we could only turn back time
He remembers the moment he knew it was too late.
He hadn't wanted to hope. The one thing throughout his life, the parts of it he could remember leading up to this moment, the one thing he had never wanted to ever do, under any circumstance, was hope. He knew—he knew—that hope was always dashed, crushed underfoot. There was never any point to hoping.
But Thomas, damn it, damn him, Thomas made it so easy to do it. To hope. So he had, he'd hoped, he'd wished, and when Minho wasn't in the underground bunker with the rest of the immune kids WCKD had stolen, when Thomas gave Gally the rucksack with the vials of the cure rattling around and Gally had taken the kids, he'd known.
He remembers knowing it was too late. He'd pushed himself too hard, and he had already been feeling so weak, so…affected…and he knew that he'd push himself even harder if it meant saving Minho, because really, there was never any choice. He would die to save Minho, the same way Minho had almost died to save him.
He remembers that night in the Maze, darkness descending and Minho panting and straining to make it back to the doors before they closed.
Yes, he'd make the same choices he did, he'd push himself to death's door, let his adrenaline and racing heart push the infection so deep into his blood that there was never really a chance, if it meant Minho would be saved. And Minho had been saved.
And yet…he remembers the moment he knew it was too late, the moment he knew they couldn't reverse what was happening to him, and he remembers being scared.
He remembers not wanting to die.
IV. Don’t wanna be reminded, don’t wanna be seen
He remembers thinking he could hide it. It didn't make any sense to him when he'd first noticed, just days after Teresa had tipped off WCKD and their team had raided the Right Arm's camp. The dark veins in his arm.
It didn't make sense, and it wasn't fair.
He remembers wanting to scream that from the tallest mountain peak, like maybe then someone would listen, someone would hear him, someone would take pity on him, someone would save him so he could stop feeling like he had to save himself.
He was supposed to be immune. That was the whole point to the Maze Trials, everyone at the camp had said. To experiment on immune children, to find a cure for the disease brought on by the end of the world as everyone had known it. So how could he be sick?
How could that blackness he'd seen on Brenda when she'd collapsed be crawling down his arm, slowly tracking its way to his wrist? How could it happen to him? He hadn't been bitten by any of the Cranks they'd encountered in their journey through the Scorch. He hadn't even been injured, which is how he and the others had been theorizing the disease spread—if you weren't immune, you had to be injured for the latent virus in your veins to wake up and cannibalize you from the inside out.
The only thing he could think of that might constitute itself as an injury when he thought about it were the injections he'd gotten at the compound WCKD had moved them too after "saving" them from the Maze, and that's when it clicked, when he understood.
He remembers thinking more about those injections as he traced the faint black veins in his arm with his finger.
He remembers thinking to himself that, if he really wasn't immune, then he must have been one of the first boys the Box had sent up to the Glade for a reason. He'd been a placebo the entire time, a marker for which the scientists employed by WCKD could study how an immune brain reacted to the trials versus a standard, versus a non-immune brain…versus him.
He remembers thinking that, since it had been WCKD who rescued them, WCKD the entire time, behind everything and everyone, then the other boys had to have received the same injection.
And maybe WCKD knew Thomas too well, their favorite child and then the turncoat who had saved them all, and maybe WCKD knew Thomas would figure it out and they would escape again.
And maybe WCKD needed an insurance policy.
Maybe those scientists and those researchers had needed something—someone—to take Thomas and the others out when they themselves couldn't.
And maybe…maybe that was Newt.
He remembers thinking that WCKD must have made him sick on purpose, must have injected him not with vitamins he'd been lacking after years of being trapped in the Maze, but with a live version of the virus already dormant deep inside him, and the war that had been waging within his body had ended, and the cascade had begun, and there was no going back now.
He remembers thinking he should run, wake in the middle of the night and leave a note behind to explain and run and find an abandoned place to hide out and die in, better to be out of sight and out of mind than to let his friends watch him die like this.
Not like this.
V. Hands are silent, voice is numb
He remembers Winston. Remembers the hut on the edge of the woods in the Glade in which lingered the perpetual smell of blood, an odd scent of iron and stagnant water. Remembers the sounds of metal on flesh, the almost sick rhythm with which the Slicers worked.
He remembers the sound of Winston’s voice, calling out orders. Winston, carrying another Greenie from the hut through the Glade, blood dripping from their hands or their forearms, sometimes pieces of finger missing—those ones never lasted long as Slicers, they transferred quickly from working with dangerous tools to doing things. Frequently they would join the Baggers, the team headed by Billy that was somehow always needing more people. He supposed it was the position the rest of the Gladers wanted to avoid, immediately after the Runners. Something about the Maze and being close to it or dealing with the Runners or poor Glader who had died in the Maze freaked people out.
He remembers Winston fighting their way out of the Glade, the bravery with which the Keeper had swung his blade, the lines drawn on his face as the boys held off the Grievers with nothing but wits and re-purposed steel and wood sharpened to hell and back. The din of voices, the screams, echoing off of the walls of the Maze. The shrill cries that in all of his time, the former Runner had never heard. There had been the mechanical grinding of the walls, the occasional clicking and whirring of the Grievers and WCKD’s little metal creatures, and of course the constant sound of his own feet pounding, his heartbeat in his ears, the whooshing of his breath. But never, never the sound of other people in there screaming. He remembers Winston’s delight at the facility they’d all been taken to after escaping the Maze, the comfortable beds, the showers….
He remembers Winston at the end.
He remembers the wound in Winston's stomach, the decaying and rotting flesh, the black and bulging veins of blood. The scent, so familiar, of iron and stagnant water, but worse, somehow, because they'd made it out.
They'd escaped.
They'd won.
The smell of death shouldn't linger any more, not like it did, clinging to Winston almost as badly as the sand of the Scorch. The smell of death shouldn't have scared Newt the way it did in those hours, watching Winston waver and stumble through the broken landscape, seeing the look in his eyes, a look Newt recognized, because he'd felt it, seen it, in his own eyes, in the early days of the Maze. It was the look of someone who was dying. The look of someone who wanted to die, because it would be easier.
It would be a relief.
A blessing.
And surely, surely, it would be less painful than living.
He remembers Winston wrestling the gun away from Minho, remembers the odd mixture of terror and curiosity that he'd felt when Winston held that gun to his head. He'd been unsuccessful in his one attempt at taking his own life, and then Thomas had scrambled down the embankment to wrestle the gun away from the dying boy.
He remembers the horror written in the lines of Thomas's face, how Thomas had refused to accept that Winston should be able to die the way he wanted to, instead of turning into one of the Cranks. The words he and Minho and Thomas had exchanged about it, about Winston dying. Thomas's reluctance, but then the slow acceptance, and the tremor running up Thomas's arm as he handed the gun back to Winston.
The hollow expression on Thomas's face as he led the remainder of their small pack away, towards the mountains and the distant hope of people, people in the mountains, mountain people, that would provide a safe haven for escapees of WCKD.
The gunshot, echoing through the uneasy silence lingering between the group as they trudged through the dunes.
He remembers the twisting of jealousy in his stomach at that sound, an irrational flash of anger that out of the two of them, it was Winston who was dead.
VI. And the tears stream down my face
He remembers seeing the compound and all the other children for the first time. He'd been a child himself, and he'd been straining against his captors to try and reach for his sister, for Lizzie, he remembers crying her name and being lashed, remembers the crackle of the taser and the imposing and dangerous glint in the man's eyes as the man had tugged him through the door.
"Her name is Sonya now. Yours is Newt."
No. No, her name was Lizzie, and she was his sister, and the fight had gone out of him when he'd seen all those other children. The trepidation on some of their faces, regret and curiosity on others.
He remembers shrinking into the kindest of the three men—if any of them could be called kind—that were shepherding him into the cafeteria of the compound and thinking to himself that he would be Newt, he would be the best Newt there ever could be, and he would call his sister whatever they told him to, if it meant he could see her, hold her, keep her safe, the way he'd promised their parents, because the men shepherding her had taken Lizzie and were taking her to the other side of the room, where all the other girls were.
He'd been young, but he'd understood what that meant, that they were kept separate like that.
But his sister was his responsibility, and he had to take care of her, so he would do whatever they asked, he would never talk to any of the other boys, he would solve the puzzles they set before him, he wouldn't cry or squirm or protest when they took vial after vial of his blood and frowned at the results and shook their heads and called him a waste, he would do everything they asked, anything they asked.
He remembers that he had done it all, every single thing, and they'd taken her and wiped her memory anyways, as punishment, and when he asked why they showed him the tapes of him and the other boys talking, like it was some sort of crime, and Lizzie was gone, there was only Sonya, and they hadn't taken his memory, but now he knew they could, and he was Newt, he was the best Newt, he was the only Newt, there would never be another, because he was Newt, he was, he was, he remembers crying at the men in their white coats with their stern faces and the women with the disappointment clear as day in their eyes.
And he would never be anyone else.
VII. As I feel myself fall, make a joke of it all
He remembers the ivy, the vines, somehow sticky and slick at the same time, although maybe even now he couldn't tell the difference between the feeling of sweat on his palms and the cool moisture of plant life.
The concrete of the wall scraping his knuckles, bloody fingertips clutching at whatever handholds he could find.
His breath, high and quick and somehow louder than the wind that buffeted around him the higher he went along the wall, deafening and almost scary, because it was almost as fast as his heart was going, almost as fluttery as his pulse, which was tattooing a tempo at every point in his body where his veins were closest to the surface of his skin.
He remembers wondering if whoever had put them in that Maze, those faceless bastards from WCKD, were watching him now. He'd always thought they were watching somehow, because every time that Box came up it always seemed to have whatever it was they were lacking in the Glade.
He had hoped they were watching him then.
He remembers doubting that those WCKD men would save him, if they even had a way to, because the point of this Maze was surely to kill them all, even if it meant starting with their spirits first.
His spirit had been the first thing to go.
He wouldn't let the Maze kill any other part of him. He was a Runner, he could do that easily enough himself. He knew the most remote parts of the Maze, knew where the ivy climbed the highest along the grey walls, knew the routes of all the others, knew there was no way any of them could make it to him on time.
He remembers that he'd underestimated Minho, neglected to see how much his friend cared.
He doesn't remember falling.
He could never remember the fall.
But he imagines it would have felt something like this, this dropping—stopping—of his heart, this quiet gasp of breath and this stilling of everything around him.
He could never remember letting go.
He doesn't want to let go now.
But he imagines this is what letting go had felt like the first time, this slow tilt backwards, watching the sky getting farther and farther away, feeling like the ground was rushing up to meet him quickly, too quickly.
He remembers the pain in his leg. He could never forget that, had never been able to forget that. It had haunted him, even though the memory of the fall fled when he woke later. But he could never remember the impact.
But he imagines it would feel like this does—cold concrete, a dull ache everywhere, and the terror on Thomas's face.
Had Minho been that afraid?
He doesn't remember. Why can't he remember? He imagines Minho must have been that afraid, too, but his memory is fading, and it must have felt like this. It must have.
It had to have felt like this.
He remembers waking up later, in the shady hut the Med-jacks worked in, sitting up and gasping, a hand to his chest, pressed over his heart, disappointed and relieved and terrified to feel it beating still in his chest.
He remembers sucking in breath after breath of that familiar air, the scent of the forest surrounding the Glade.
He thinks that he can remember the call of a bird in the distance, and he thinks that he would like to wake up in a cool hut like that when Thomas succeeds in getting them out of the city.
But he doesn't remember why they need to leave the city, and he doesn't remember how he got here.
He remembers that something is wrong, but he couldn't say what, just that this must be a dream, because he's in free fall and he doesn't want to die, climbing the wall of the Maze to try and kill himself was a mistake, and he'd like to wake up from this dream and for it all to be over.
But he doesn't remember what went wrong.
And when his memories fade, he doesn't wake up gasping.
He doesn't wake at all.